Whirlcool, you may want to try what I did.
I have a chemical imbalance which requires me to avoid anything of a deceptive, fearmongering, sensationalist nature.
Two days after the 9/11 occurrences, I installed my television on a wheeled cart of the variety once commonly found in hotel rooms, disconnected the set, and wheeled it into the coat closet.
I still had the radio, internet, newspapers, etc. to look at if I chose, but it was not easy to watch television anymore.
I directed that the set in my bedroom be moved down to my partner's study (which shortly after, became HIS bedroom, but that's another story!).
I was going through a difficult period emotionally and I instinctively knew that I had to draw the line somewhere, in terms of becoming aggravated by outside stimuli, that I had once found entertaining, but now seemed like excess blather and noise to me.
I looked upon it as an experiment. I knew that, if events unfolded where I needed news, official information, or instructions were to arise, the television was easily wheeled back out and connected. I also knew that I was JUST lazy enough to not bring it out if there was something of entertainment value I wanted to see, I could venture "down the hall", lol, or just go over to my mother's or my friend's house, and be able to BS over a cup of coffee while I watched it.
Do you know, that, not ONCE did I roll that sucker out of its new "home"??
I was never a couch potato to begin with, but I realized that even that the time I did spend "vegging out" was too much when I placed a vase with eucalyptus branches where the TV was, and found I was sitting on the sofa, STARING at the eucalyptus leaves!!
You just don't realize....it was insidious. And I'd only begun to realize that it was causing me psychic and spiritual harm.
The television was undermining my mental health and my ability to be strong at a time when I needed it most.
It was an IRRITANT that I willingly exposed myself to each night, without even realizing why.
So, you should try it. Just make sure that your "experiment" doesn't impede on anyone else in your household, or their ability to watch, because that can breed resentment, and nothing is worse than to do anything to undermine harmony in your home.
A little over a year ago, I knew I was "together" enough to deal with the onslaught, and I was DYING of curiosity as to HDTV, and the widescreen phenomenon. So, I bought one, had it delivered, and I love it.
But I don't watch it very often. I almost NEVER turn it on without a specific program scheduled, I don't fall for "lead-ins", and I even keep the political programming to a bare minimum (many of our "reality-based" networks seem singularly obsessed with showing us what the inside of every single American prison looks like, anyway).
Recently there was a crane collapse that demolished a building a few doors down from my friend's home, and that, to me, was reason enough to check out the "breaking coverage". But I soon turned it off because, what more was to be seen? I knew by then that my friend was safe, the victims were being dug out and attended to, and the real story was, what foolishness (or what greed and corruption, as it turned out) had caused such a thing to happen?
That I could get from radio bulletins later, and I could clean the kitchen and fix Easter salads in the meantime.
Doing without the television completely can change your entire outlook and the way you watch it, you manage your time WAY better, and, even if you decide after all that you want it in your life, you've totally raised your own self-awareness and it competes in a healthier way for that portion of your own spare time. It can really lead to a quality decision.
Good luck!
